BleepingComputer.com: Screen goes black won't turn back on.

Greetings all, so lately I've been having some problems with my Dell Vostro A860 that runs Windows Vista Home Basic 32-bit service pack 2. Anyway recently I've been having problems with my laptop. I often leave my laptop on while I'm around the house doing things, mainly it's downloading or running a virus check, but when I return the screen is off (which is good, I set my screen to turn off after a few minutes) but when I try to get the screen to turn on again by pressing a key on the keyboard or clicking the touchpad or moving it nothing happens. I can't get the screen to turn back on and so I am forced to hard reset my laptop which I really don't like to do. When I start up the computer again it works fine but I notice that not much of my downloads or scan have been completed like the computer froze pretty early on.

At first I thought it was a virus or something so I posted on the appropriate forums on here, here is the link to that topic:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic414131.html

Unfortunately it appears that this isn't the problem so now I'm here trying to find help to resolve this issue. I hope someone out there knows the cause of this problem and a way I can fix it. Thanks in advance!